


His Room

by TryxeyHobbitses



Series: A Lifetime in Snippets [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Hey! Still mostly canon compliant!, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Romance, The Sweetest Love, We see you Iris, Yeah it has always been there, reflections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 22:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11884590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TryxeyHobbitses/pseuds/TryxeyHobbitses
Summary: The night he came to live with them, he came with little more than a trash bag full of things. She hadn’t even waited until he was all the way in the house before she was holding her hand out to him. He was her best friend and she loved him and though she didn’t know how to comfort him exactly, she knew that she could show him to his new room and let him know that he was loved and that he had a safe place where he could live. She led him upstairs into the spare room and showed him his new bed. He looked around a little vacantly and then just sat on the edge of the bed, she sat next to him and held him. The room had never really been anything other than a guest room and sometimes office before, but now with him sitting in it, it started to look and feel like a room.





	His Room

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is the second work in my collection inspired by daily writing prompts. Again, the stories do / will build on each other, but at the same time are also all stand alone stories. 
> 
> Prompt: Explore the room you’re in as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Pretend you know nothing. What do you see? Who is the person who lives there?
> 
> Note that the work does not exactly follow this prompt exactly...but it was definitely inspired by it. The nature of each story in this series means that they are quick-writes, so please pardon the errors.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

His Room

The night he came to live with them, he came with little more than a trash bag full of things. She hadn’t even waited until he was all the way in the house before she was holding her hand out to him. He was her best friend and she loved him and though she didn’t know how to comfort him exactly, she knew that she could show him to his new room and let him know that he was loved and that he had a safe place where he could live. She led him upstairs into the spare room and showed him his new bed. He looked around a little vacantly and then just sat on the edge of the bed, she sat next to him and held him. The room had never really been anything other than a guest room and sometimes office before, but now with him sitting in it, it started to look and feel like a room. 

It was a couple of weeks after he moved in, her dad had slowly been moving his stuff in. He was refusing to unpack, insisting that his dad was innocent and would be released so there was no point in unpacking. Her dad had urged her not to push, give him time. She had tried to get him to unpack, even going so far as offering to do it herself and letting him know that she would help him pack back up when his dad was released. He still refused, but he did finally unpack some basics: a picture of him and his parents, a picture of them when they were younger dressed up for Halloween, a couple of his favorite books, and some DVDs that he kept scattered across his dresser. When he cried out at night and she went to him, climbing in beside him and holding him until he went back to sleep she would always stare at the boxes and wish that she could help him know that this was his room, his home. Even with the boxes though, she couldn’t help but think that instead of this empty space, it had started to actually look like a room.

It was two years later and they were finishing up the 8th grade. Somewhere between 7th and 8th grade he had given up on living out of boxes and she had finally convinced him to unpack, always with the caveat that she would definitely help him pack back up when his dad was released. His sadness as he had finally given in had been palpable. His eyes shining with unshed tears as he pulled out awards that he had won and knick knacks he had acquired, those tears finally falling when his hands find a card that his mother had handmade for him for his 11th birthday. She had held him while he cried, then gone downstairs and found a frame for the card and placed the framed card on his dresser. She had told him over and over that she knew it wasn’t okay, but that she loved him and would help to make it better the best way she knew how. His room now had snippets and pictures of unexplainable phenomenon from around the world painstakingly organized and categorized on his desk starkly contrasting with the with the usual cluttered accoutrements associated with a newly teenaged boy: video games, magazines, CDs. Their picture, the one of them from Halloween was now on his nightstand, not across the room on his dresser. When she came into his room at night now at night, she would stare at their picture until she fell asleep thinking that this looked like he had finally begun to make it his room. 

It was senior year of high school and now he had an entire wall dedicated to his unexplainable events, much to her dad’s chagrin. She had helped him find the roll on cork board to attach to the wall and then she spent hours with him searching and researching for any sign of what could have caused what he saw that night, anything that they thought might be related went onto the wall. She hoped that creating the wall helped him, she felt like it still wasn’t enough. His room was now stacked with college brochures and paraphernalia from various college visits, some he had gone on with her and some he had gone on without her. She had already decided where she was going and had a single pennant hanging over her bed, he had a couple of choices he was still mulling over so the room seemed filled. His dresser held an assortment of trophies and awards along with the original picture of his parents and the framed card. More pictures of the two of them together now decorated the mirror in his room, pictures of them from school dances (he was her perpetual date), pictures of them on vacation, pictures of them hugging and smiling up into the camera, pictures of their life. Pictures of him and her dad and a couple of his other friends also joined the general lived in clutter of the room. On his nightstand was still the picture of them as kids along with a newer one of them at junior prom. She didn’t spend nights in his room anymore, but sometimes when she sat there talking with him late into the evening, she would look around thinking that finally this was his home.

It was the first summer following their Freshman year of college and she had missed him. She had been close by so when she came home on the weekends she would always wander into his room. Mostly it was the same, but neater, cleaner, emptier. She missed him so much that it hurt when she was home without him, on nights when she felt it too strongly she would sleep in his room, in his bed. Her dad never mentioned it, never said a thing. The second he came through the door, she already was on him. She had jumped into his arms holding him so tightly that he protested. With a smile she had dragged him up to his room and helped him unpack. It wasn’t until his last bag was empty that she finally breathed a sigh of relief. It hadn’t felt the same without his stuff, the stuff that he touched, the stuff that he used about. She never told him about sleeping in his room when he wasn’t there or hunting through his closet or drawers for clothes of his to cuddle up in when she missed him. His nightstand still held their pictures that night, his first night back, she stayed there like she had when they were kids and she held him tight breathing him in and looked at their pictures as they drifted off together thinking that finally it felt like his room again.

She had moved out, she had moved in with her boyfriend, but she still came home regularly. Funnily enough, when she moved out, he had moved back in. She had walked past his room, noticing the differences. It was neater now that he was an adult. The wall was no longer decorated in unexplainable events, rather a couple of posters neatly framed, some signed. His desk now sported nothing but a couple of pens and pencils along with his laptop. His dresser was neat, the same old picture of his parents and the framed card still sitting on top, a stack of neatly folded clothes waiting to be put away, and a valet that held the things he needed for work. Gone from his nightstand was the picture of them from junior prom, but the one of them as kids was still there in what looked like a new frame. She missed him, she missed living with him. She missed being able to fall asleep listening to his breathing and she never even stopped to wonder why, it just was. She had fallen asleep listening to his breathing so regularly throughout the years that sometimes, in the night when she was honest to herself, she realized that the breathing of the person sleeping next to her was wrong and couldn't fall asleep. On nights like this, though she was ashamed of it, she would close her eyes envision being in his room, listening to his breathing and only then could she drift off to sleep.

They had emptied his room together when they moved into the loft. They had packed up the boxes together like she had always promised she would when his dad was free. There were tears this time as they recalled her promise, but this time, in addition to the hugs there were soft kisses of encouragement. He had wanted to speed through this process, but in the end was happy that he had let her help. When his room was packed this time, they both sat together on the bed that had been his for so many years and decided to say goodbye to it one last time by curling up together and falling asleep in each other’s arms as they had so many times before. This time as she drifted off to sleep, she stared at the boxes thinking of that boy that she had pulled up here so many years ago and held him all the tighter. This would always be his room.


End file.
